Online Telecommunications Courses and
TCO Certifications Catalog

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3 Network Fundamentals
$19

This is a new course being tested before incorporation in a Certification Package. Feel free to take this course at the "testing" price. Please let us know of any typos or glitches you might find at customerservice@teracomtraining.com


In this module, we’ll cover the fundamentals of IP packet networking.

Bandwidth on circuits and network equipment has become high enough, and delays low enough to successfully carry live voice and video in data packets on data networks, in an achievement of one of the Holy Grails in this business &endash; convergence, where voice, video and data are carried on the same network &endash; telecommunications became what was formerly called data communications.

Accordingly, to understand the modern telecom network, we begin with the fundamentals of what used to be called data communications.

We’ll start with basic circuit configurations, then the need for link addresses and frames on individual circuits, then IP network addresses, packets and routers to connect circuits to form a network. For completeness, we’ll finish with a look at two add-ons to an IP network service: TCP for reliable communications over the unreliable IP network; and MPLS for managing flows of IP packets in the core.

The goal is to build a solid foundation in packet networks and packet communications, which is the basis for everything today, including amongst other things the Internet, the telephone companies’ network core, cellular and Wi-Fi.

Course Lessons
1. Introduction
2. Point-to-Point Circuits: Serial and Parallel
3. Multidrop Circuits: Point to Multipoint
4. LANs and Broadcast Domains
5. Framing and Error Control Requirements
6. Frames & MAC Addresses
7. Networks, Routers and IP Addresses
8. Carrier Packet Network Services
9. IP Packets vs. MAC Frames
10. MAC address vs. IP address hopping from SFO to NYC
11. IPv4 and IPv6 Packets
12. TCP, UDP and Port Numbers
13. MPLS Labels

A course completion certificate is awarded upon passing the course exam.

Based on Teracom’s famous Course 101, tuned and refined over the course of 20 years of instructor-led training, we’ll cut through the jargon to demystify telecom fundamentals, explaining the jargon and buzzwords, the underlying ideas, and how it all works together… in plain English.